Tag Archives: TED

Artist Nathalie Miebach takes weather data from massive storms and turns it into complex sculptures that embody the forces of nature and time. These sculptures then become musical scores for a string quartet to play. (Via TED).

“Weather is an amalgam of systems that is inherently invisible to most of us. So I use sculpture and music to make it, not just visible, but also tactile and audible.”

“This piece here is read very differently depending on where you place it. You place it in an art museum, it becomes a sculpture. You place it in a science museum, it becomes a three-dimensional visualization of data. You place it in a music hall, it all of a sudden becomes a musical score. And I really like that, because the viewer is really challenged as to what visual language is part of science versus art versus music.”

For anyone who is not familiar with art, has never taken an art history class, or feels lost and out of place in an art gallery, this is the video for you! That’s my sales pitch to watch this TEDTalks lecture by Tracy Chevalier.

Chevalier’s process is a non-intimidating approach to art that doesn’t scare anyone away because s/he doesn’t have a degree in art! It’s simple: look at art and tell yourself a story about it. So go to museums and galleries and just LOOK! Then tell yourself a story, ask yourself questions, draw connections to your own experiences, and then maybe you’ll start thinking about how the artist created the piece, its historical context, whatever! It will just start to flow! No fear!

“And what I’d like to tell you, our senses are so limited — we cannot hear everything, we cannot see everything. We don’t feel, “I am touching the air,” but if the breeze is a little more faster, then I can feel it. So all of our construction of reality is through these limited senses. So my recourse was like, is there any way to use all this as just a symbol or a sign? And to really get to the point, we should move beyond, you know, go to the other side of the wall, like in logic, like are invisible. Because when we see someone walks, we see the footprint. But if we’re just cutting that footprint from the whole thing and trying to analyze it, you will miss the point because the actual journey happens between those footprints, and the footprints are nothing but passing time.” [quote from video]

“If you just ask an opinion of how, everyone can interpret it. Like, let’s say, if a schoolteacher says, she’ll simply say, “To get to the other side.” Why the cow was crossing the road, you know. The answer can be so different if Potter said it. He would say, “For the greater good.” Martin Luther King would say, “I imagine a world where all cows will be free to cross the road, without having their motives called into question.” (Laughter) Imagine Moses comes now, and he sees the same cow walking around the street. He would definitely say, “God came down from heaven, and he said unto the cow, ‘Thou shalt cross the road.’ And cow crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing as a holy cow.” (Laughter) Freud would say, “The fact that you’re at all concerned reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.” (Laughter) If we ask Einstein, he would say, “Whether the cow crossed the road, or the road moved underneath the cow, depends on your frame of reference.” (Laughter) Or Buddha — if he saw the same cow, he would say, “Asking this question denies your own nature [as a] cow.”” [quote from video]

Janet Echelman found her true voice as an artist when her paints went missing — which forced her to look to an unorthodox new art material. Now she makes billowing, flowing, building-sized sculpture with a surprisingly geeky edge. (Via TEDTALKS).

I love when any artist uses fibers in unconventional ways– larger than life sculptures made of fishnet? I’m with you!

“I got a call from a friend in Phoenix. An attorney in the office who’d never been interested in art, never visited the local art museum, dragged everyone she could from the building and got them outside to lie down underneath the sculpture. There they were in their business suits, laying in the grass, noticing the changing patterns of wind beside people they didn’t know, sharing the rediscovery of wonder.” (quote from the video)